Installing VOXL IO on Sentinel Drone – QUP2 and QUP7 Conflicts
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Hello ModalAI Team,
I was wondering if you have a specific guide or documentation on how to install the VOXL IO on the Sentinel drone. I’ve run into a couple of issues regarding available QUP ports:
The QUP2 port (J18) is currently occupied by the ESC.
The QUP7 (J16) port has its RX line already in use by the receiver for my remote controller. Pin 11 is already being used.
Given this setup, am I expected to remove the ESC and rewire the motors to the VOXL IO? Or is there an alternate recommended configuration for integrating the VOXL IO on the Sentinel platform?
Any guidance or examples you could provide would be greatly appreciated.
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@tonygurney What are you trying to use the VOXL 2 IO board for?
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@Eric-Katzfey I am looking to attach a gripper to the drone
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@tonygurney I am also using a ghost atto as my receiver
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@tonygurney Did you want to control the gripper using an application on Linux? Or as a driver in PX4?
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@Eric-Katzfey I’m trying to control the gripper using a Python script running in a Docker container on Linux. My plan is to use pymavlink to listen for remote controller commands, like a specific channel input, and then trigger the gripper based on that input. So I think it's not integrated directly as a PX4 driver; it’s more of a companion application running alongside PX4 that reacts to MAVLink messages in real time.
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@tonygurney One option is to use the ESC board. It has PWM outputs. There is a
voxl-send-esc-pwm-cmdutility on your VOXL 2 that can be used to send PWM commands to the ESC. However, with this option you would need to solder the PWM connections directly to the ESC board and not everyone is comfortable with that. -
@Eric-Katzfey Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the ESC only have enough motor outputs for each of the propellers? So to add another PWM signal I need to either use a GPIO pin or the expansion voxl2 IO board
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@tonygurney The ESC doesn't use PWM to control the motors. So it has the PWM channels free for other uses. The ESC used in the Sentinel actually has the PWM IO on a connector (J3) so no need to solder: https://docs.modalai.com/modal-esc-datasheet/
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@Eric-Katzfey How can I control those PWM signals? Since at the moment I am not reading anything from any of the pins.
